The ‘Gene Drive’ That Builds a Malaria-Proof Mosquito

Image: Anopheles stephensi Mosquito (female). David Scharf/Corbis

wired.com - November 24th, 2015 - Sarah Zhang

On Monday, scientists announced they could cheat the laws of evolution: They had devised a way to force a gene that kills malaria parasites to spread through a whole population of mosquitoes that normally carry the parasite—at least in a lab. No malaria in mosquitoes means, hypothetically, no malaria in people, either. All this is possible thanks to a controversial new technology known as a gene drive.

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